Regarding Kenny's 'choice' at the end of Around Every Corner (a hypothetical fix)
Deltino
Moderator
So, let me just start by saying that I'm not fully sure if this really deserves it's own thread or not, but I've been thinking about Kenny and the episode 4 ending, more specifically, his 'choice' in coming with you or not. We all know how it works by now, and we all have our own opinions regarding this scene, and more specifically, our own opinions regarding Kenny and his choice.
So, if there's one problem with this scene in particular, it would be this; if you don't support Kenny on basically everything, he will not willingly come with you, unless you tell him that Clementine is his family. It's been discussed too many times to count, and yeah, I'm aware of that. And I have no doubt similar threads to this have popped up in the past, probably back when Season 1 was still releasing. But let's just look at this scene for a moment.
In a lot of ways, this scene is technically brilliant. Sure, maybe the branches provided by this ended eventually meet back up in the fifth episode, but this moment really does a good job of providing some amount of consequence to the player's decisions up to this point. The tables get turned: instead of the player making the choices, now the characters get to make their own. You're pretty much at their mercy, depending on how you've treated them in the story so far. It's a pretty nice example of the tailored narrative that Telltale was going for with the series. And it was a really great way to wrap up the penultimate episode of the season. It's a rather complex and unique scene, that finds an interesting way to involve the player's choices up to that point, even if the story mostly winds back onto the same track for the finale.
However, even with that being said, the scene isn't without some faults of it's own. What I'd probably consider to be the biggest fault of this scene should not be any surprise: Kenny and his responses in particular. If you didn't side with Kenny much at all, or you were more split down the middle with him, this scene still works quite nicely. Kenny being hesitant to come with you, or flat-out refusing to makes sense in these situations. Likewise, if you sided with him pretty much all the time, the scene also works quite well. Those choice paths make it feel like there's a definite, (mostly) logical consequence to how you've treated Kenny in the story.
But our specific problem arises from one particular scenario here: there's not really an adequate middle ground between these different sides. It's more of an all or nothing decision in essence. Either you're his friend, or you're not. Even the game's code works off that idea, be it intentional or not.
For people who don't know, Kenny's 'decision' in the game's code basically works like this: you have a point system, each thing you do for Kenny will give you a certain amount of points. Some things are worth more than others. For example, killing the boy in the attic gives you 0.75 points, siding with Kenny in the meat locker will get you 1.5 points, while saving Duck on Hershel's farm will get you a full 2 points. This system, and more importantly the math involved, is where this problem originates from.
Saving Duck on the farm, shooting Duck, siding with Kenny in the meat locker, and dropping Ben are the four major point-givers. All four give at least 1.5 points each, with the choice of saving Duck, shooting Duck, and dropping Ben all giving 2 points each. Furthermore, with the way this is set up, three of those four have to be met in order to fully get Kenny on your side. Basically: either Ben or Larry have to die for Kenny to fully be on your side. Due to the huge amount of points the two are worth, they can immediately tank your friendship with Kenny. Ergo, you cannot save both of them and be Kenny's friend. It's one or the other. You can disagree on some of the more minor choices, or on Larry or Ben, but that's the cut-off point; you have to quite literally side with him the other 90% of the time, or it's a bust.
Due to this system, Kenny will decide to not to help you find Clementine - at least not willingly - no matter how well you treated him previously, if you didn't do at least one of the big two choices (Ben and/or Larry), and if you don't choose to remind him that Clementine is basically your family, which obviously, as many of people feel, makes Kenny look like a petty, ungrateful douchecanoe, and... probably many other derogatory terms. All of this really comes down to the fact that with the point system, they didn't really account for the people who didn't choose those two choices (which, given the complexity of all of this, was more than likely an oversight that wasn't anticipated), which leads to a lack of a middle ground between the outcomes, which has the potential to flat-out kill the friendship between Lee and Kenny, or more likely, the relationship between the player and Kenny, all while seemingly nullifying the other choices you might have made in Kenny's favor. The Larry decision in particular is a reeeeal doozy of a discussion for people, especially since Kenny's attitude/behavior towards Lee in episode 3 is based solely off that decision, but that's it's own separate problem for another time. For now, we're gonna focus on one problem at a time, which right now is Kenny and the end of episode 4.
So here's the main question of this whole post: how could this segment be fixed to make Kenny's decision-making/rationale make a bit more sense, but still retain the weight of the player's decisions? How can we make Kenny's decision look less petty and ungrateful, but still keep it very much based on the player's decisions? How can we make it more - for lack of a better term - fair?
I believe there is a rather simple solution to this, at least in theory: give Kenny a fourth dialogue tree for this scene. As it stands, there are three currently:
Sided with Kenny all the way: Willingly accompanies Lee no matter what, even if you try to go alone. ("You always been there for me, Lee...")
Mostly sided with him, except on 1 or 2 things: Doesn't willingly accompany Lee, but can still come along if family is mentioned. ("Lee, man, you know I care about Clementine. And I am a Christian man...")
Barely, if ever, sided with him: Kenny will outright refuse to go with Lee. ("Don't know why you're looking over here, Lee...")
What I think would have helped was the inclusion of a fourth dialogue path:
- Sided with Kenny most of the time, disagreed on a few things: Will accompany Lee, but less out of friendship, and more out of obligation to family. In essence, his reasoning and dialogue is less on a personal level ("You always had my back"), and on a more social level ("You always had my family's back")
As an example for how the dialogue would go for this proposed fourth tree:
"I'm in, pal. You've helped my family too many times for me to just turn my back on yours. Just lead the way."
If you try to go alone, he'll still come with you as well, with a statement along the lines of something like this:
"No way, man. We might not agree on everything, but I know we agree on one thing: family's what matters in the end... and there ain't no way I'll let you lose that, either."
So, now we have four different choice/dialogue paths, but there's one small problem still: My proposed fourth one is pretty much the same as the second one above. So the second one needs a minor adjustment:
- Sided 50/50 with Kenny, split right down the middle with him: Kenny will give you the current dialogue he has; the good old "And I am a christian man..." speech. If you still helped his family to some degree, you can still persuade him with the "Clem is my family" option. Nothing changes, except the requirements to get this scene are made a bit more fair. You need to do a lot more than only disagree with him on killing Larry. You need to get as close to a 50/50 with him as possible.
With 4 different dialogue paths, this scene is much more balanced in terms of how you treated him. For example's sake, to break it down into a simple scale. Let's say, for this example, you have 10 total things you can side with him on:
Sided with Kenny 9-10/10 times: Accompanies you no matter what, considers you his closest friend ("You've always been there for me, Lee...")
Sided with Kenny 7-8/10 times: Realizes you didn't always agree with him, but always looked out for his family ("I'm in, pal.")
Sided with Kenny 4-6/10 times: Is hesitant to go with you, mentioning that you've sometimes had his back, sometimes didn't. Plays out the same way as it does currently. ("You know I care about Clementine. And I am a christian man...")
Sided with Kenny 0-3/10 times: Will refuse to go with Lee no matter what. ("Don't know why you're looking over here, Lee...")
I know what's done is done, and Telltale isn't going to magically decide to go back and change that scene, so this is pretty much purely for discussion, and any other ideas people might have regarding this. Also, it might have been something I ate earlier or something, but I have been in an intellectual mood today, so I figured, why not put it to good use and make a lengthy, maybe-hopefully-good discussion out of it?
So yeah, let's try discussing something a little bit different, and hopefully something people can find (sort of) interesting. Any thoughts on this? Any better suggestions? Ideas of your own?
Comments
It always grinds my gears getting to the big "who will come with you" decision, because I know I have to persuade Kenny to come with even though I've helped him and his family every step of they way. As you have mentioned, it's due to that point system. I hate to say this, as I know a lot of thought and care has been put into this scene, but Telltale went a little lazy for the people who wanted everyone alive and liking Lee. Understandable though since this might require a ton more work (possibly). The point system would need tweeking and even more dialogue would have to be worked in, then pray it dosn't glitch.
Maybe Telltale staff thought Kenny's character would consider some choices would hold more weight over others. It can't just be coming with you because you sided with him X amount of times. Gotta sacrifice someone to "protect" the group. Gotta love how contraversal Kenny can be. I believe If anything Kenny considers Clem his family, but he let's his feelings towards Lee cloud his judgment.
Actually this scene was kind of awkward, I mean many people complain that they've been nice to Kenny and yet he wouldn't come. In my story, I usually sided with him, but not all the time. For example, I didn't help him kill Larry, I didn't drop Ben, and yet he gave me the bro speech. "You've always been there for me, Lee". And right after that, when I was gonna try to convince Ben to come too, he would say something like: "Lee, man... Do you think that's a good idea?" Instead of: "I'm not coming if this shitbird comes too, he fucks everything he touches". Am I the only one?
Something would have gotten messed up in the save files then I guess, because from what is known about the inner workings (the point system), it is impossible to get the score needed to get the bro speech if you helped Ben and Larry. For the sake of it, you need a total of 9 points to get the bro speech. The highest total you can get without killing Ben and Larry is 7.75.
I've even tested this myself. Did a playthrough once where I sided with him on everything besides Larry and Ben, he didn't give me the speech.
I've actually seen things like that happen more than a few times now. One one playthrough, I decided not to do anything in the meat-locker. For the rest of the episode, it acted like I helped Larry (Lilly liked me, Kenny didn't). Then episode 3 suddenly flip-flopped and acted like I killed him. The stats for episode 2 even said I didn't help kill him, yet episode 3 acted like I did. In spite of that, the rest of the game still seemed to recognize that I didn't help kill him (the special stats at the end of the game, etc)
I can also remember another similar deal: in A House Divided, Kenny will say one of two things about Lee: "He was a hell of a guy" or "Lee and I had our differences, that's for sure". You only get the 'hell of a guy' one if you fully sided with him. Yet despite not fully siding with him in S1, I still got the 'hell of a guy' line on the xbox version of the game. When I got the game for the PC, I did a playthrough that was the exact same as my xbox playthrough, and I got the other line instead that time.
There's some definite oddities going on with the save files or something, there's instances where certain things just don't line up correctly
That's weird. I swear he gave me the bro speech with those decisions I told you. I still have the file on my PS3. He also said to Clem "He was a hell of a guy" in my S2 imported file.
Thanks for explaining how it all works with Kenny's character and what you need to do to make him come with you. Yeah I pretty much agreed with your way of fixing it. Kenny is a character that largely depends on choices anyway, probably more than any other character.
Now as for my opinion on Kenny, I liked him from the moment he arrived in the game. A lot of the choices to agree with him wrote themselves for me really, like saving his son over the other guy, standing up for his son when Larry wanted him out even though there was no evidence he was bit. I thought Kenny should be the one to kill Duck to spend some time with him over his death, then when Katjaa died, I done it myself. Didn't want to let Kenny near a gun after that really. Not saving Larry for me had nothing much to do with Kenny and was more personal. I agreed with him on the motel stuff because I didn't trust Lilly at that point and he ended up being right about that too.
The times where I didn't agree with him was saving Ben, threw some punches at him in the train fight and some of the smaller decisions on the boat stuff. For me the Kenny I know would have risked his life to save Clementine in a heartbeat.
Interesting...so is all our bickering on Kenny due to the game not being consistent in everyone's playthroughs? Would we as players all have had the same interactions with Kenny, and we just don't know it, all because of some game bugs that aren't the same from platform to platform? E.g. if I made the exact same game- and dialogue-choices that @Vaxij did, but I got radically different reactions from Kenny because of some bug, then of course we're going to disagree. The game isn't giving everyone the same game, it seems.
Perhaps it would be an interesting idea to make a survey asking what choices you made, how Kenny reacted to you, and what platform you played the game on, to see what correlations can be found there.
I hated Kenny in that episode
Chances are you would still be getting the same dialogue as usual. Like I said in the main post, there's the point system. The only way to get the full 9 points is by killing Ben or Larry. One of them has to die to hit the breakpoint. So if you tried to help Larry and saved Ben, then no, you shouldn't be getting Kenny's best buds speech. For you, getting his "christian man" speech is the game working as intended. For @Vaxij however, who didn't kill either of them but still got Kenny's best buds speech, he's the odd one out. His game would be the one that's bugging out, or so I believe.
This is only speculation on my part, because I seriously have no idea why it would be different on different platforms, or even just in different playthroughs on the same platform. Something messing up in the save files seems like the easiest explanation, though. Either some bit of save data is getting missed during the save process, or something is being written to the save file incorrectly, causing the game to pull up the wrong scenes/dialogue. Most of the time they tend to be minor, only affecting small bits of dialogue, but in a case like this with Kenny, that minor change can make a huge and crucial difference.
I don't even think the game's save files are readable, let alone editable, so figuring out if the problem is the save files themselves is pretty much impossible. But I'm fairly certain that's the case. I mean, it's no secret Telltale's engine isn't exactly setting an industry standard, you know? It managing to save and load things incorrectly doesn't seem too unreasonable.
I dunno. I played them on PS3 at release. Back in 2012. I was thinking on replaying both seasons on PS4 as well soon. I'll let you guys know if anything changed.
Ha, yeah smoke was practically coming out of my ears at that point.
This explanation makes it sound so scientific with this point system, lol. Still, when Kenny gave me that hate speech, I at that point still considered him a loyal friend, and that right there was the last straw. It seems so random a system considering how real the feelings it generates are.
I know, right? It's a great thing that the game can feel as organic as it does. It's not an easy accomplishment to make a game that really captures that feeling. That when you break it into basics, is just various different systems like the above, but it all feels so organic and natural that you pretty much forget about all that back-stage stuff. You sort of stop looking at it like any average game, even if it's just for a little while.
Yeah after all we [players] have done for him and his family and he disregarded Clementine immediately. And yet he suddenly cares about her like they were the BEST of friends. This is nonsense! I wish Lee said something beyond "Go fuck yourself". He should have said "Fuck your boat. Fuck your accent. Fuck your fat. Fuck your family. AND FUCK YOU!
Okay that was too much but Kenny was somebody I wanted to kill and Clementine having the opportunity to do that is sweet indirect retribution.
I sided with Kenny pretty much in every situation. The only time i really didn't talk was when we discovered the boats had all been destroyed because the lines you have to pick, only lead to arguments so i figured at the time, given that he was breaking down mentally, why cause an argument? I think it was pretty stupid to make the player have to side with him on pretty much everything. I know Kenny relies on loyalty. But there's been heaps of play throughs i've seen where the player has sided 90% of the time yet his still declined to help them. I think if you were with him for more then 50% and protected his family, then he should be made to come with you.
Exactly. This is why I understand why a good chunk of people hate this boat obsessed mothatrucker hat guy. Anyway, I hope this doesn't happen again in Season 3 where things end up the same or a certain percentage of what you do matters (where it doesn't actually matter to begin with).
I did see a lot of people turn on him after that decision where he didn't side with you, even if you did side 90%, i think telltale did it on purpose to see who would stay loyal and who would hate him, like Luke not caring about the group and more keen on having sex with Jane.
I was disappointed at Luke. But I laughed when he got salty because Jane left in S2 Ep4
I like how he tried to make Jane the bad person by saying she made him an offer lol like he had sex with her without consent.
Huh? Interesting logic.
I think you need to switch the pronouns around.
Thanks for the touch up. You know what i mean regardless.
Just clearing things up.